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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30068490">She Chose You</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/downdeepsouth/pseuds/downdeepsouth'>downdeepsouth</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>WandaVision (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:26:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,696</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30068490</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/downdeepsouth/pseuds/downdeepsouth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Agatha Harkness rises and chooses a new apprentice.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. A Gas of a Day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Chapter 1</strong>
</p>
<p>Today had really been something! Agnes pulled herself up as her friend Wanda walked off to talk to some military types. Carefully dusting off the debris on her smart, pressed black slacks, Agnes turned and walked back towards her house.</p>
<p><em>When had she gotten these slacks?</em> she thought to herself. They were a little risqué, quite on the cutting edge of fashion for a housewife. Though perhaps not compared with what Wanda had on…</p>
<p>Agnes remembered something about Halloween. And there had been a smattering of people in costumes. That must have been it. The relief put a skip in her step as she walked up her drive. Bending down to smell her purple roses, Agnes considered asking Ralph when she’d picked up the slacks. As if he even noticed.</p>
<p>She spent the next couple of hours in the kitchen. Ralph might not have noticed her slacks, but he would certainly notice her food. Agnes had a wild fantasy that Ralph would one day look up from his plate and kick her out of the house.</p>
<p>They said the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, but surely that was just an exaggeration!</p>
<p>Agnes didn’t want to chance it. A salmon salad niçoise, followed by a hearty cassoulet, and capped off with reine de saba and an upside down martini with a twist seemed like enough when she laid it all out.</p>
<p>“Ralph?! Calling my husband Ralph! Surely you can smell that its dinner time!”</p>
<p>He wandered out from the back of the house, looking at her like she was some kind of green-skinned alien.</p>
<p>The first words out of his mouth were, “You’re still here?” followed quickly by, “Oh, so I guess we’re still doing this…” as he looked over the table.</p>
<p>“I was saving this to go with dessert, but you look like you could use it now.”</p>
<p>Agnes went on and mixed the martini in its silver shaker. Lighter on the gin and heavier on the vermouth, just like Ralph liked it. He watched her pour it out and then accepted it wordlessly.</p>
<p>“Let me guess, you need to ‘pop down’ to the basement?”</p>
<p>When he said the word <em>basement</em>, the door leading below opened with a slow creak. Purple light poured out from the crack. It made sense to Agnes that she needed to check on things down there, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on exactly what she needed to do. After a few moments of thought, she just shrugged.</p>
<p>“A wife’s work is never done. Go on and eat, Ralph. I wouldn’t want your dinner to get cold.”</p>
<p>Her husband stood still in place. He took a sip of his martini experimentally. Agnes rolled her eyes at his behavior. Honestly, he acted like everything she served him might be poison. She passed him and opened the door to the basement. Her face and body were bathed in purple light.</p>
<p>Agatha strode down the stairs. Her hands left the stair rails to trace the runes on the walls leading down. The Scarlet Witch had been a fool to leave her here, so near the place of power she’d built for herself.</p>
<p>Wanda had power, but not a lick of training. Had Agatha known from the start that she was the Scarlet Witch, she might have been more careful. After what felt like ages stalking Wanda, Agatha was starving for power by the time she put the pieces together on Maximoff’s mysterious persona. She responded by snapping closed what she thought were the perfectly positioned claws of her beartrap for Wanda. Agatha hadn’t even considered that the witch’s power might be too much for her to take on in one sitting.</p>
<p>She should have kept up the bosom buddies routine and fed off Wanda slowly. Agatha proposed an apprenticeship too late, after she’d already burned through her good will. She wouldn’t make that mistake with Wanda again. Putting her failures away for now, she focused on what it would take to get her through the night.</p>
<p>The first thing she did was to shore up her wards. Agatha had been prudent with them when she first arrived. Wanda’s chaos magic was too unpredictable. Spells on spells on spells, all feeding on each other’s byproducts and some serving just to cast others. She had been concerned that her own magic would throw off the delicate puzzle of some highly skilled witch and held back to fly below the radar.</p>
<p>Agatha needed to be ready. One-by-one, she listed off the threats to her in order of urgency:</p>
<ol>
<li>S.W.O.R.D.</li>
<li>The FBI</li>
<li>Westview residents</li>
<li>Wanda</li>
</ol>
<p>She considered adding Ralph to the list. The drag of a chair out from the dining room table told her that it wouldn’t be necessary. The confinement Agatha had kept him under by merely <em>not</em> advocating for him to be included in a storyline was enough to diffuse any threat he posed.</p>
<p>Every night, she made a meal like this and laid it out in front of him. Standing still in the middle of the living room, he was held in place by Wanda’s magic. Eating while he watched, she told him about her day. She made sure to include every time she mentioned his name to Wanda… along with the dig she added so that no one would expect him to be free to appear in the show anytime soon. Agatha doubled-dipped, turning him to her service and keeping him informed about Wanda’s plot. By the time she was ready to cast Fietro, Ralph was putty in her hands.</p>
<p> She turned her attention to S.W.O.R.D. and the FBI. They were both moving through town as she worked. Agatha wiped a hand across a grey ball, peeling dust away to reveal polished crystal underneath. Peering into it with intention, she wound her power around her fingertips. <em>Where were they?</em></p>
<p>They were outside of town, tied up in one another. The American national police were arresting the man in charge of the private-or-government (she couldn’t quite tell) super science organization. Agatha took the ball in her hands. Dust fell around it as she turned it in her palm.</p>
<p>Wanda had been both naïve and arrogant to assume that she could just serve as Agatha’s judge and jury. Just because <em>she</em> decided all Agatha deserved was a cursed life as a homemaker didn’t mean the institutions of men would go along with it. Any moment now either S.W.O.R.D. or the FBI would be at Ralph’s door looking for her. The conflict between them was only a delay.</p>
<p>While Agatha had an idea for the agencies as a whole, she knew Monica Rambeau would need individual focus. Rambeau had been pinned down by Ralph at Agatha’s direction and would know her location. Looking for her in the crystal globe, she saw that the woman was with a… she tilted the ball to focus and was surprised to see a shapeshifter. Agatha did not recognize its base form, but it didn’t matter---Rambeau was leaving and could be handled later.</p>
<p>For S.W.O.R.D. and the FBI, Agatha thought a bit of rescripting was in order. They would certainly be interested in her if she was a powerful witch flying around and causing all kinds of damage fighting Wanda. Agatha was most comfortable removing herself from the story entirely, but she knew that would take more time than she had. Focusing on the part which would draw their attention most, she recast the role of villain.</p>
<p>It was White Vision all along.</p>
<p>White Vision was the one flying around causing all the destruction. He held the little rugrats hostage in the street to bait their parents. Wanda fought White Vision in an aerial battle and then her Vision faced off against his double for a final fight.</p>
<p>All it took was a shifting of the scenes and a bit of reordering of the events. The Westview residents had seen White Vision. S.W.O.R.D. knew what it was capable of when they released it. And now it was gone, an adversary that could lead S.W.O.R.D. and the FBI far away from Westview.</p>
<p>Once her story was complete, Agatha released it in phases. First, a purple mist wound throughout the town. Wherever people were now that they were free to choose, they would breathe in the new memories and after a good night’s rest, they would be firmly planted. Any S.W.O.R.D. agents still canvasing Westview would get a dose of her mind-altering magic too.</p>
<p>That took her to phase two. Agatha had learned over the years that people might second guess their memory, but would believe what they could confirm with their technology. Using a flip phone Agatha had found in Ralph’s house as a surrogate for this modern tech, Agatha cupped her hand over it. The phone was engulfed in a purple mist. She imagined how security cameras, drones, cell phones, and any other devices that captured any part of that final battle would pull in her purple mist. Their data would be reshaped just as human memory was, leaving confirmation for anyone second guessing this new version of events.</p>
<p>The third phase was also her final one. For all the little moments where one person was sure they remembered things differently, or just felt like something wasn’t right, Agatha released a circle of ease.</p>
<p>
  <strong>
    <em>No one needed to dig to deeply for answers. The simplest explanation was certainly the right one.</em>
  </strong>
</p>
<p>Her thought reform messages repeated over and over in a loop in the background programming of every compatible piece of technology, lulling anyone in or near Westview into a state of amenability.</p>
<p>Agatha took a moment to savor these new protections. After taking a beating from a baby witch, her ego needed a little balm. She still had more than enough power to conceal herself and escape the nations of men.</p>
<p>Her eyes drifted over to the stand. Without the Darkhold sitting in it, the four prongs teetered back and forth on the desk. When Agatha looked at the stand directly, the intermittent teeter totter turned into a frantic shaking. The stand sought the Darkhold, and vice versa. Normally the book would win, drawing the stand to it through a series of events fortuitous to that outcome.</p>
<p>In Agatha’s possession, the stand would stay put. Eventually the Darkhold would return to it, and to her. If she was lucky, Wanda would come with it. But that was a threat that would require a long game plan and Agatha still had a few time-sensitive threads to tie up.</p>
<p>Everyone in Westview was breathing deeply, taking long sips of her remastered season finale. There were two people whose memories Agatha wanted to preserve. Making her way back upstairs with a new air of confidence, she found Ralph helping himself to a second piece of chocolate cake.</p>
<p>“I hope its moist enough for you.”</p>
<p>He dropped his fork. Ralph had been in the process of sitting back in his chair and froze, his body dropping onto his seat abruptly after the silverware.</p>
<p>“You recognize me. That’s good.”</p>
<p>Ralph was still, frozen like a deer in headlights. While there were many reasons for Agatha to despise him, in this she respected him more than any other man in Westview. He knew enough about her to be properly humbled.</p>
<p>“Oh stop. I wasn’t the one that held you frozen in place for days. That was Wanda. And I was right about her. When confronted with what she was doing she ran from the consequences. Now you are all left to pick up the pieces.”</p>
<p>Agatha watched Ralph with a growing annoyance. He was such a cowardly sad sack. While it had been convenient before, now she didn’t have time to build up his ego. She slid back around the kitchen counter and made him another martini.</p>
<p>“Seriously, calm down. I helped you and everyone else here get out from under her boot. When the sun rises tomorrow, you are the only one who is going to remember that. Everyone else in Westview will think of me as the woman caught driving through town who Wanda decided to turn into a fifties housewife airhead out of spite.”</p>
<p>She repeated the lie she’d come up with on the fly after being caught in a detail by Wanda’s Vision puppet. Walking over, Agatha put a second martini in front of him. He watched her cautiously as he took a sip.</p>
<p>“Wh-why are you ststst—still here? Why nnnnnn—not run?”</p>
<p>Of course he wanted her to go the hell away. She had to admit that it wasn’t the worst idea. What planted Agatha’s feet was the Darkhold. She had taken the dark tome into her possession three times now, and each time she grew exponentially in power by unlocking some new secret. Leaving it in the hands of the Scarlet Witch guaranteed that she would accelerate towards ending the world. For once, Agatha getting what she wanted was also the right choice for the planet.</p>
<p>“If I run, who will save Westview when Wanda returns? And believe me, she will. This is where she discovered her true power. I suspect Westview will always hold a special place in her heart.”</p>
<p>Ralph choked at that. <em>Thank darkness</em>, she thought. Scaring this one was a much faster route to compliance than building him up. A bribe to sweeten the pot couldn’t hurt.</p>
<p>“But my protection isn’t guaranteed. Those S.W.O.R.D. fellas might just scoop me up to study me. I did spend a lot of time in her presence. If I’m to stay here and play firewall for your neighborhood, I’ll need your help.”</p>
<p>Agatha helped herself to some cake, skipping dinner without a care. Taking a bite, she nodded to Ralph that he could do the same.</p>
<p>“What could I do to help?”</p>
<p>He spoke with his mouthful, which turned Agatha’s stomach. After three hundred years, men remained simple, filthy creatures.</p>
<p>“You are in luck,” she said, dabbing a spot of rogue icing off the corner of her mouth with a white napkin. “Your part is easy and playing it will help you succeed in a goal you’ve been unable to achieve on your own.”</p>
<p>Agatha needed most people to believe that she was still under the nosy neighbor curse. When Wanda returned, she didn’t want the commoners tipping her off that Agatha was back to peak health. Better that she think she still had power over poor, stupid Agnes.</p>
<p>“A regular spot on an NYC serial that will get me the heck out of New Jersey?” Ralph asked hopefully. “I would make a great background detective on Law and Order.”</p>
<p>“No! How pathetic are your aspirations? I’m talking about <em>respect</em>. Your neighbors will <strong><em>respect</em></strong> you.”</p>
<p>She took his sullen reaction to mean that he saw no value in that. Fortunately, he still feared her, Wanda, and a whole host of other things.</p>
<p>“All you have to do is call me Agnes and tell anyone who asks that you are happy to keep me on as a roommate until I get my memories back.”</p>
<p>Ralph’s heart had stopped racing, and he got up on stable legs. He moved away from the table into the living room, where he started to pace.</p>
<p>“Okay, I can work with this. I’m a stand-up guy and since you took such good care of me when Wanda was turning things upside down, I care about you now.”</p>
<p>It took Agatha a minute to realize that this is what it looked like for him to help her. She was going to have to contribute to his <em>character</em>. She held back the urge to gag and just nodded encouragingly.</p>
<p>“Hell, maybe we’ve started developing feelings for one another. I mean, all those nights playing husband and wife…”</p>
<p>“That’s far enough. Nice direction, but if you get handsy I’ll bring out the claws.”</p>
<p>She kept her tone light, but even the hint of a threat was enough to reassert her control over him.</p>
<p>“Glad were on the same page. Remember, Agnes, not Agatha. I’m going out but I’ll be back later. And take the couch tonight. If anyone asks, you are letting me have the bed. They’ll think you’re a gentleman.”</p>
<p>Out the back door, Agatha took on the gait and dumb happy mask that Agnes wore. She wound down the streets in a way that looked random but was entirely to a purpose.</p>
<p>Last time she missed her opportunity to take on an apprentice. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. A master and an apprentice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>When Wanda returns, Agatha will be ready.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Chapter 2</strong>
</p>
<p>In her role as Agnes, she knew Sarah Proctor as Dottie Jones. Calling her name out confidently and waving got Agatha from the sidewalk up to her roses before Sarah could stop her.</p>
<p>“Ag---Agnes? How are you… doing?”</p>
<p>Agatha smiled wide in response. Sarah would have taken in plenty of mind-altering breaths by now. They must have taken effect, because otherwise Sarah would have run screaming into her home at the sight of Agatha.</p>
<p>“Oh I’m just having the most interesting day! All these soldiers running around makes a girl want to pop the top on a diet coke, am I right?”</p>
<p>She laughed loudly and kept it up until the other woman half-heartedly joined in.</p>
<p>“Would you like a pop? I can’t stay out long but… well, now that everyone is free my daughter is holding up in her room on her phone.”</p>
<p>She took a diet coke and sat on Sarah’s porch watching the S.W.O.R.D. agents driving and running through town square. Agatha balled her toes as Sarah rambled on about family and love and nonsense. She had enough of this with Wanda. Being friends with other women was truly a form of torture.</p>
<p>“I can’t blame her for however she’s feeling. I would think that she would want to be outside after being trapped in her room alone for so long, but how can I know? It was harder on the children than it was on us. I’d rather sit on the couch with her, a giant bowl of popcorn, and the new season of Gilmore Girls but… I get that she’s at that age where friends are more important.”</p>
<p>Agatha waited until Sarah seemed relaxed. Noticing a dark SUV driving in the direction of Ralph’s house reminded her that the clock was ticking.</p>
<p>“Dottie, dear, I don’t mean to turn the conversation to me but there’s something I need to tell you.”</p>
<p>Sarah hadn’t corrected Agatha on her name. At this point, after 15 minutes going on 150 hours, she seemed at ease with nosy neighbor Agnes.</p>
<p>“No, it’s okay. I could go on and on, but we’re okay now. I’m sure this is all confusing for you. I don’t know exactly what you remember…?”</p>
<p>What she remembered was, of course, everything. Agatha focused on the memories that brought her to Sarah, formerly Dottie, soon-to-be recast in a new role.</p>
<p>In the beginning, when Wanda had only taken the center of town and had everyone who’d been trapped in her bubble working on her “show” as crew or audience members, Sarah had been the one to push her husband “Phil” to be one of Vision’s coworkers. When Wanda wanted a town housewife hen to spar with, she chose Sarah to play Dottie. Sarah united the “core cast” with her mantra <em>Save the Children</em>.</p>
<p>“That’s just it, dear. I remember everything.”</p>
<p>She let her words settle in the air. Sarah gasped but she didn’t move. Wanda had gotten the people of Westview accustomed to their trauma responses and now Agatha benefited from their non-consensual training.</p>
<p>“I should go. To be brutally honest, there is no benefit to me to stay here. I was attracted to Wanda’s magic, fearful of its strength and the uncontrolled chaos of it, and now I’ve got a powerful villain and a couple of military branches after me. And to stay here I have to play wife to Ralph Bohner, which I can assure you is an unpleasant task. But if I go, all the wards I put up to protect Westview from Wanda will start to fade.”</p>
<p>Agatha watched as waves of response washed over Sarah. Fear, then surprise, consideration, almost a laugh at Ralph’s expense, and then fear again.</p>
<p>“You tried to kill her children.”</p>
<p>Sarah came out with guns blazing. Agatha could respect that. Right now, while S.W.O.R.D. agents were still covering the town like ants, Sarah might have a chance should she call for help.</p>
<p>“They weren’t children. They were creations of her mind and her magic, grief at the children she would never have with her dead husband made manifest. The real children, like your daughter, were locked in a nightmare so she could play house with those things.”</p>
<p>Agatha watched fear and empathy spoil and rot into rage in Sarah’s eyes. All people had a couple of paths to villainy, even good people. In Agatha’s experience, especially good people.</p>
<p>“I thought they were someone’s children. When I saw them, all I could think was that now we could get some stories with the children. I would have let my daughter speak to <em>her</em> if it meant that she could move.”</p>
<p>Agatha felt something bump her ankle. Looking down, she picked up her familiar, Señor Scratchy.</p>
<p>“Well look at you! I thought I’d lost you there for a minute.”</p>
<p>Her rabbit came to share his sight with her. Stroking his soft ears and back, Agatha saw that S.W.O.R.D. agents had visited Ralph. He did as she’d instructed, and they left. He didn’t think they were still looking for her.</p>
<p> “I explained to Ralph that Wanda will return here. The place a witch discovers her power is a touchstone for her. She will return again and again if she can.”</p>
<p>Sarah was thinking, and Agatha saw no reason to rush her. Petting her rabbit, she looked out at the woman’s prize-winning yellow roses. The color gave her some theatric inspiration.</p>
<p>“I feel obligated to stay here until I can train another witch to protect Westview. In the morning, everyone will have forgotten what I did. They’ll think of me as the poor dunce who got too close to Wanda and was cursed. Only you and Ralph will know the truth.”</p>
<p>Sarah gasped again, but this time the sound was drowned out by a trail of SUVs driving out of Westview.</p>
<p>“Why me?”</p>
<p>Agatha motioned to the roses.</p>
<p>“Because she chose you.”</p>
<hr/>
<p>As Agatha played cat-and-mouse with her third glass of merlot, she mused on her progress over the last three months. She had made a monster, and in record time too.</p>
<p>“Who played ‘the Chicken Finger Friday stampede’?”</p>
<p>Agatha raised her left hand and waved.</p>
<p>“That was me!”</p>
<p>The group included Sarah, Sharon (who had been cast as Mrs. Hart), Isabel (formerly Beverly), and Janet (formerly nameless Halloween mom). They all laughed, congratulated her, and overindulged in merlot alongside her.</p>
<p>What started as a book club that discussed depressing self-help books about recovering from <em>The Snap!</em> trauma and first-hand accounts of encounters with Avengers became a booze and edible-fueled game-and-dish night. Sarah organized them, and they rotated hosting responsibilities. Tonight, they were at Sarah’s house.</p>
<p>“Agnes you are so funny! My turn!”</p>
<p>At Isabel’s words Agatha raised her glass and took a drink. To think Sarah wanted to train Isabel as a witch too. This was the problem with apprentices. You took on one and the next thing you know, they’ve built you a coven.</p>
<p>“Janet, try my sangria.”</p>
<p>Janet was Sarah’s focus tonight. She had worked with Agatha on draughts and tonight would be her first test.</p>
<p>“Ooohhh, sangria?”</p>
<p> Agatha jumped up and put on the role of housewife host extraordinaire.</p>
<p>“Who wants a glass?”</p>
<p>In her best Agnes, she passed around glasses and lubricated their game night for at least another hour. That would be long enough to make sure Sarah hadn’t made the mistake that would turn Janet’s skin (and now everyone else’s too) into reptilian scales.</p>
<p>Sarah’s desire to learn more was ignited by a need to heal her family and friends. Behind it, Agatha could see the lust for power that tempted all witches. She fed that lust with half-truths about the Darkhold mixed with damning full-truths about the Scarlet Witch and seasoned with skills that brought out Sarah’s inner power.</p>
<p>Agatha wagered that all of the residents of Westview could manifest at least low-level magic after their prolonged proximity to Wanda’s chaos magic. Most of them passed through her spell barriers more than once. None of them were “special” in that regard, but that was the last thing Sarah needed to know. She told Sarah of the legendary witch Arcana, which the Darkhold said would challenge the Scarlet Witch with her yellow-gold magic.</p>
<p>There was, of course, no such witch. But for a woman raised in a generation where everyone wanted to be the chosen one/lost hero/last epic warrior, Agatha was more than happy to indulge a power fantasy.</p>
<p>Now her days were filled with baby witch tutoring and her nights with taco bars, tabletop games, and every conceivable combination of booze + crafts. If it weren’t for the layers of chess and risk Agatha was playing on her own, the whole experience would be its own circle of hell.</p>
<p>After three months, “Agnes” was a fully accepted member of the Westview community. She barely needed Ralph anymore, but he knew better than to say a word against her. Sarah organized the community and kept Agnes right at her side. S.W.O.R.D. agents were long gone, and daily scrying showed no signs of their return. And after weeks of tutelage, Agnes had cultivated an apprentice with a subconscious enthrallment.</p>
<p>As a part of her cover, “Agnes” called all of the Westview residents by their cast names. Some of the others balked and corrected her, but “Dottie” entertained it as a part of her ruse. The result was a proxy personality, created by Wanda and reinforced by Agatha. The woman who was Sarah to her family and friends was Dottie/Arcana to Agatha, and having a secret name was a dangerous thing. It was just the sort of insurance Agatha required when training an apprentice.</p>
<p>She knew better than to let herself be betrayed by a younger woman.</p>
<p>“Isabel no. No! How could you??!”</p>
<p>Janet cried out between peels of laughter at Isabel’s winning card. It was the first sign of animation from her since Wanda’s control. Across the room, Agatha caught Sarah’s eye and winked. Even without Wanda, Agatha could hear the cheesy television sound effect in her head.</p>
<p>All-in-all, meeting the Scarlet Witch had not been too bad.</p>
<p>Agatha was assured a place among the named magic wielders in the Darkhold now that she’d played a crucial role in the Scarlet Witch’s awakening. After years of study at different points in her life, Agatha knew all of the named characters. She used to fantasize that her long life would lead to that kind of power, and now she was sure she was on her way.</p>
<p>She might let Dottie tag along for a while. Tutoring her plumped the budding witch like a grape. Agatha knew that one day she’d crush that grape between her teeth.</p>
<p>“It looks like my sangria is a hit.”</p>
<p>Sarah was clearly proud of herself. And she should be, as Agatha had done nothing to help her along. This achievement was all her own.</p>
<p>“Dottie, dear, you are the queen of the fruit cocktail!”</p>
<p>The ladies roared in the background. Agatha helped herself to some sangria, smiling at her own achievement. It normally took time to get an apprentice new to magic used to feeding other people human blood. Dottie did it with a wink and a smile.</p>
<p>Leaning over, she whispered in her baby witch’s ear, “My dear Arcana, how far you’ve come.” </p>
<hr/>
<p>&lt;and scene&gt;</p>
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